When a New Jersey politician looks to Pennsylvania as a model for policymaking, he\u2019s in the middle of a fiscal disaster, looking across the Delaware River, where another government \u2014 not quite as close to calamity \u2014 looks good by comparison.<\/p>\n
That was my first thought about Republican Jack Ciattarelli campaigning for governor of the Garden State while also hyping the Keystone State. \u201cThey don\u2019t have a property tax crisis, they don\u2019t have a business climate crisis, they don\u2019t have an energy crisis,\u201d Ciattarelli said of Pennsylvania in a Politico<\/a> report that noted the candidate\u2019s admiration of his neighbor.<\/p>\n I would not presume to give campaign advice to Ciattarelli. However, he really should set the bar higher for improving Trenton\u2019s failed policies. Crisis or not, my state of Pennsylvania has serious problems in the areas he named.<\/p>\n Consider the thousands of Pennsylvanians who annually lose homes to sheriff\u2019s sales or have left the state to find work. Because of the \u201cgreen\u201d agenda of Democrat administrations, the commonwealth, despite being rich in coal and natural gas, faces higher electricity prices and possible blackouts \u2014 what the North American Electric Reliability Corp.<\/a> has called a \u201cfive-alarm fire\u201d in power-grid reliability.<\/p>\n Both states risk insolvency due to atrocious fiscal policies, with New Jersey\u2019s position somewhat more dire than Pennsylvania\u2019s. Truth in Accounting<\/a>\u2019s \u201cFinancial State of the States 2025<\/a>\u201d \u2014 which compares how well 50 governments fund their budgets \u2014 graded New Jersey and Pennsylvania as \u201cF\u201d and \u201cD,\u201d respectively.<\/p>\n States with a surplus of funds rank higher than those with deficits \u2014 the latter applying to the two low-ranking states. New Jersey is dead last in 50th place, with each taxpayer \u201cburdened\u201d with $44,500 of per capita deficit spending. Pennsylvania, number 40 on the list, has a deficit of\u00a0 $9,400 per taxpayer. By comparison, exactly half the states have budget surpluses, ranging from Maine\u2019s $100 per taxpayer to North Dakota\u2019s $63,300.<\/p>\n Those states are on the road to prosperity; New Jersey and Pennsylvania are on the road to nowhere. Whatever the relative degree of failure, the pair\u2019s long-term trend is downward.<\/p>\n Between 1930 and today, the number of congressional seats for Pennsylvania and New Jersey dropped from 34 to 17 and from 14 to 12, respectively. Both have lagged other states in population growth for years.<\/p>\n The Tax Foundation\u2019s 2024 State Business Tax Climate Index<\/a> ranks New Jersey overall at 50th \u2014 last again \u2014 and Pennsylvania at 31st. They are also low on the list in the ranking for corporate taxes: 48th for New Jersey and 41st for Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n Having spent decades advising hundreds of companies on avoiding or surviving bankruptcy and six years as a Republican member of the state House of Representatives, I know about financial risks and public policy.<\/p>\n As founder and chair of the bipartisan Financial Rescue Caucus, I led efforts that empowered the state\u2019s Independent Fiscal Office to account for unintended consequences when evaluating policy proposals. We also created internal controls for the state\u2019s pension systems, which helped produce better returns on investments for retirees and protected taxpayers from having to pay for shortfalls in pension funds.<\/p>\n Yet, when I left the legislature nearly three years ago, much still needed to be done. Lawmakers failed to enact my \u201clean-government bill\u201d because both parties resisted injecting into the budgeting process ways of identifying unnecessary spending, which makes up 20 percent of the state budget. Languishing to this day is the Taxpayer Protection Act, which would link government spending to the rate of inflation and population.<\/p>\n The current budget impasse in Harrisburg \u2014 where legislative Republicans are resisting Gov. Josh Shapiro\u2019s proposal to spend billions more than anticipated revenues \u2014 reflects an absence of controls and distinguishes Pennsylvania as the only state without a budget.\u00a0Budgeting processes that measure the effectiveness of programs \u2014 which private companies routinely use \u2014 would ensure responsible expenditure of funds.<\/p>\n Throwing more money at issues does not solve problems. For example, continual increases in the state\u2019s education budget repeatedly produce failing schools. Pennsylvania spends more than $23,000 per student<\/a>, up 44 percent since 2015, yet fewer than half the students in public schools are proficient in any subject area. Reforms that would direct funds to students rather than to schools and expand choice among public and private schools should be implemented.<\/p>\n I know from my experience in government and from the budget surpluses of other states that responsible governance is possible. If Ciattarelli could bring sufficient leadership\u00a0to achieve that in Trenton, perhaps Harrisburg could look to him for inspiration.<\/p>\n Frank Ryan is a CPA who specializes in corporate restructuring. He served six years as a Republican member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and retired as a Marine Reserve colonel, having deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, and numerous other locations abroad. He can be reached at fryan1951@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When a New Jersey politician looks to Pennsylvania as a model for policymaking, he\u2019s in the middle of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[60,14248,14249,33,915,28,30,29,14250,14251],"class_list":{"0":"post-20746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economic-growth","10":"tag-jack-ciattarelli","11":"tag-josh-shapiro","12":"tag-new-jersey","13":"tag-pennsylvania","14":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","15":"tag-pennsylvania-news","16":"tag-phil-murphy","17":"tag-regulation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}